Ghouls, Goblins and Jermaine Jenas scores a goal!

If you’re searching for a President to quote, the good news is you have 43 to choose from.

The bad news happens when you choose to paraphrase a quote from not only one of the most forgettable Presidents in American history, but from one of the darkest periods in the nation’s lore.

Enter Fred Glass. He’s Indiana’s new athletic director. Speaking at his hiring ceremony Tuesday, he said :

“We’re almost over the long, national nightmare, I hope, because our place is one that has always followed the rules”.

Maybe he deserves credit: At least he didn’t say “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice …” well, you and W can fill in the rest of the joke.

Glass is talking about the program decimation occurring during Kelvin Sampson’s reign, one leaving IU (and now Glass) waiting to hear if a phone call scandal and allegations of not properly monitoring coaches will lead to more sanctions. Beyond that, IU basketball returns just one player, is picked dead last in the Big Ten, and the football team is lifeless with a dead fish of coach owning three more contract years.

Ok, maybe the analogy wasn’t so bad. But you shouldn’t say it out loud because, well, it just sounds stupid. Puppy dogs, dandelions, babies. Yay!

Glass will replace Rick Greenspan at the end of the year. Greenspan hired, then oversaw, the mess of Sampson’s era and gave football coach Bill Lynch a 4-year contract.

Our friends at the Who Dey Revolution propose a plan for Sunday’s soon-to-be Bengals’ loss to Jacksonville: Flood The Jerk Line (for those who don’t remember, here it is. Basically a number to call when someone is unruly … of course, the Bengals basically staffed it with one person initially, and the whole thing was a total failure. Who’d think the Bengals would plan something badly?).

Anyhow, the wesbite is dubbing this “Project Mayhem” (hopefully more succesful than Rush Limbaugh’s ill-fated one to nominate Hillary Clinton), asking everyone to call the jerk line (513-381-5375) during Sunday’s game and say “As a Bengals fan, Mike Brown is mentally and emotionally abusing me from his owner’s box”, then hang up.

Ok, we could think of a number of things more severe, but that will do for now.

In case you’re nostalgic, here’s the line from “Seinfeld”:

Tim Tebow endorses his candidate.
Mike Leach signs student from the stands.
Wedding bells ring for LWN’s pal in Ypsilanti, MI

http://lovewithoutnagel.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/college-football-week-9-2/

Speaking English 10-24-08

As if things couldn’t get worse for pro sports’ worst franchise.

According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, a guy named Randy Reed went to Sunday’s 38-10 Steelers debacle and, for lack of a better term, got sucker-punched by a Pittsburgh fan and knocked out. It’s made some big news, and the franchise’s response? No surprise: It’s sucked: Team offered him tickets to ANOTHER game.

Yes, the one that’s 0-7 and starting a biology professor at MIT at quarterback. Please, someone kill us.

Reed, 48, said he was “bantering” with Steelers fans (we’re assuming it was a bit more, but that’s his term), and got into an argument about Mike Brown (yes, apparently there’s one guy left defending king bozo).

“I said, ‘Yeah, well, at least he’s not selling the team,” Reed told The Enquirer. “You guys are going to be the LA Steelers!”. (We’ll again ignore the likelyhood of the latter part of the statement to finish the story).

Reed said the next thing he remembered was waking up in a security office covered in blood with a broken wrist in a cast, and other various cuts and bruises. The person or persons left, somehow eluding the vision of all 65,000 people at the game (perhaps all who’d drunk themselves silly watching the joke of a football contest).

Reed was at the game with his wife and 23-year-old step daughter, but the two were in the bathroom when all this happened. The article didn’t address whether Reed (or anyone else involved) was drinking, so we’ll leave that to your imagination. No one’s been arrested yet.

Bengals’ business director Bob Bedinghaus (who was basically a 1-man wrecking crew in getting Cincinnati its new stadium before being drummed out of the Hamilton County Commission) called Reed to apologize and offer him four skybox tickets to any future game (yes, the blood dries quicker in the A/C). Of course, the Bengals said nothing about paying Reed’s future medical bills from the incident.

Later, Bedinghaus talked to WCKY 1530-AM about whether the team owner, who does his best ostrich impression this time of year, would talk about the incident.

“Mike Brown doesn’t comment on these kinds of things,” Bedinghaus told them.

To be fair, Brown never speaks about anything. But when you’re 0-7, in a horrendous economy, your star quarterback on the shelf, no light anywhere near any tunnel, and you have THIS kind of story, perhaps, at the very least, you should release a statement.

Of course, what do we know? Not like you’ve had 17 non-winning seasons in 18 years.

From Stairs’ postgame press-conference:

“When you get that nice celebration coming into the dugout and you’re getting your ass hammered by guys — there’s no better feeling than to have that done.”

And the video: